Can $30 million solve global warming? Expert: I'm worried that this company will run away with the money

It only costs $10 to offset the impact of 1 ton of carbon dioxide in a year. Is there a cure for global warming?

This may sound like some kind of environmental indulgence, but it is actually happening. Recently, a US startup called Make Sunsets announced that they will release sulfur particles into the upper atmosphere . Users only need to spend $10 to buy a "cooling voucher", and the company will use a hot air balloon to release 1 gram of sulfur particles to an altitude of 20 kilometers. So far, they have released 20 grams of sulfur.

Making Sunset claims that the heat reflected by one gram of sulfur particles can offset the heat released into the atmosphere by one ton of carbon dioxide in a year, " one gram for one ton ." The company did not provide any references to prove this claim (and we couldn't find any), saying only that "there are many uncertainties and assumptions involved," but that "this is not a reason to do nothing."

Screenshot of Make Sunsets website

Is this method really useful?

There's bad news and good news here: The bad news is that this amount of sulfur is probably useless , and the good news is that fortunately it's useless. If this method has a real impact on the climate, the consequences will be very dangerous.

Is it possible to simulate a volcanic eruption?

The idea of ​​releasing sulfur particles to slow global warming was inspired by the phenomenon of volcanic eruptions.

It has long been known that volcanic eruptions can emit large amounts of smoke and dust, which can block and reflect some sunlight, thereby reducing the amount of heat received by the surface. A famous example is the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia in April 1815, which caused the average surface temperature in tropical regions and the Northern Hemisphere to drop by 0.4 to 0.8°C , and many parts of the world experienced a "year without summer" a year later.

It sounds like global warming would disappear automatically if there were just a few more volcanic eruptions. However, the "year without a summer" is an extreme case, and the reality is far from that simple.

In early 2022, the Hongahaapai submarine volcano in Tonga erupted violently, injecting about 400,000 tons of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere . Based on historical data, a team of Chinese scientists estimated that this eruption will reduce the global average surface temperature by 0.004℃ in 2023 .

Tonga submarine volcano eruption observed from satellite | CIRA RAMMB, NOAA

In fact, even an event of the size of the Tonga eruption would only emit about one percent of the sulfur dioxide that the Tambora eruption did. More importantly, the impact of a single volcanic eruption on the climate would only last for one to two years, not enough to affect the trend of global warming.

So, asking whether the dozen grams of sulfur that Manufacturing Sunset put into the atmosphere can affect the climate is like asking whether breaking an egg into the Pacific Ocean can turn it into egg drop soup.

How dangerous could climate intervention be?

However, if we artificially release a large amount of sulfur, can we change the climate? It is possible, but it is hard to say what the result will be.

According to current forecasts, the practice of releasing sulfur particles to cool the atmosphere could cause unpredictable meteorological disturbances. Sulfur particles cannot exist stably in the stratosphere for a long time and can only stay for a few days to two years , depending on the size of the sulfur particles and environmental factors. If we artificially add sulfur to the atmosphere, once the project stops, the temporarily suppressed warming effect will return violently, causing extreme weather and a catastrophic blow to biodiversity.

A similar situation has actually already occurred.

After entering the industrial age, humans have emitted a large amount of sulfur into the atmosphere by burning coal and oil. In the last four decades, developed countries in Europe and the United States have begun to use clean energy to improve air quality. However, studies have shown that after air pollution has been eliminated, hurricanes in the northern Atlantic have become more frequent and fiercer .

2017, Texas, USA, the scene after Hurricane Harvey passed through｜Wikipedia

Hiroyuki Murakami, a scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), found that when air pollution in Europe and the United States decreased, the cooling effect of sulfur particles also disappeared, causing the sea water to warm up, affecting atmospheric circulation and causing changes in hurricane patterns. This case also tells us that climate is a very complex system, and even actions such as controlling air pollution can have unexpected effects.

As for why we can’t keep adding sulfur particles to the atmosphere… We’ve finally cured air pollution, are we going to go back to the previous version?

Who is qualified to manage sunlight?

The company that makes sunset claims that it can offset global warming by spending $30 million a year. The company has already received $750,000 in investment and released two test balloons. However, the most worrying thing about this incident is not the technical issues, but the fact that a commercial company has "intervened in the climate" without being constrained by laws and regulations .

What is the right way to mitigate climate change? | cocoparisienne / Pixabay

From the previous examples of air pollution and hurricanes, we can also see that intervening in the climate in one region may have a catastrophic impact in another region . The Guardian also reported that there is currently no international binding force against geoengineering actions. If intervening in the climate benefits one region and causes other regions to suffer from floods or droughts, this will inevitably lead to conflicts. As the issue of climate change becomes more and more urgent, scientists are very worried that a country or organization will arbitrarily take large-scale climate intervention actions, resulting in irreversible consequences.

Even the most radical geoengineering supporters have expressed opposition. David Keith of Harvard University, who has long studied the geoengineering methods used by the company that makes sunset, told the technology media Gizmodo that "it's too bad to let a startup do it" because there may be financial risks involved. To put it bluntly,

I'm worried that they will run away with the money.

References

[1]https://makesunsets.com/pages/faq

[2]Zuo, Meng, et al. "Volcanoes and Climate: Sizing up the Impact of the Recent Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai Volcanic Eruption from a Historical Perspective." (2022): 1-8. [3]https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00376-022-2034-1

https://scitechdaily.com/tonga-volcano-eruption-to-have-smaller-cooling-impact-on-climate-change-than-first-thought/

[4]Trisos, Christopher H., et al. "Potentially dangerous consequences for biodiversity of solar geoengineering implementation and termination." Nature Ecology & Evolution 2.3 (2018): 475-482. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-017-0431-0

[5]Murakami, Hiroyuki. "Substantial global influence of anthropogenic aerosols on tropical cyclones over the past 40 years." Science advances 8.19 (2022): eabn9493. [6]https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abn9493

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/declines-in-air-pollution-have-made-hurricanes-stronger/

[7]https://gizmodo.com/make-sunsets-solar-geoengineering-sulfur-climate-change-1849931460

[8]https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/dec/25/can-controversial-geoengineering-fix-climate-crisis

Author: Maya Blue

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